


every fall comes from a height

by ignitesthestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5760016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rey muses on the darkness inside her, and how to fight it. If it can be fought at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every fall comes from a height

She can feel it in the air.

It’s a janky, discordant thing. When she had first used the Force, the key had been certainty. Stability. Clearing her mind and focusing on what she wanted to happen, what _would_ happen. Using the Light Side is like breathing; all you have to do is calm down enough to do it properly.

The Dark Side is like running. And after staying in one place for fourteen years, Rey has been doing more of that lately than she’s ever done in her life.

The word _monster_ lingers on her tongue. She recalls the shape of it rolling in her mouth, how quick it had been to spit it out. It had come so easily, then. The assurance that here was a man who was less than a man, less than human. He’d killed his own father, for a reason Rey couldn’t determine. For no reason at all.

She remembers the sweet, singing victory of pushing him back. The pleasure, raw and ugly, that had seared through her at the look on Kylo Ren’s face, the knowledge that he _would not win_ this fight. The power. The Force.

She had hurt him, and she had been glad to do it.

The word monster comes less easily, now.

There is a part of her that expects all of this to go away. Jakku is etched into her bones. She might cling to Maz’s words, to the Resistance, to Finn, but when she climbs back into the _Falcon_ there is an ache in her. _Such things are not meant for you_ , it whispers. _You are a little thing. A nothing._ She half expects her hands to move on their own, set course for the Western Reaches and disappear into obscurity.

It’s a familiar feeling. What’s new is the resentment that follows, a bitter tang in the back of her throat. She has the Force. She’s special. She has always _been_ special, and the universe let her sit on a backwater planet for fourteen years with the words _I’m no one_ playing on repeat.

It isn’t fair. That’s a brand new thought for Rey. The only way to get through life as a scavenger is acceptance, a slow conviction that _everything is fine, I’ll be okay like this_. If she had never left Jakku, Rey knows that she would have lived out the rest of her life telling herself that, and there’s something obscene about that.

* * *

General Leia takes one look at her and knows. There is a grief as vast and as barren as a desert in that woman, but she still finds room somewhere for Rey. “Life’s unfair,” the general says bluntly. “There’s a charmed few who get through it on sunshine and daisies, but you and I and everyone in this Resistance have a darker path to walk.”

Rey folds her hands in her lap politely, not wanting to point out that this isn’t especially helpful. The older woman’s chuckle holds real humour, and Rey marvels at the strength it must take to laugh after your son has murdered your husband.

“The question isn’t what you do to avoid the darkness,” Leia continues. “It’s how are you going to get through it, without making it a part of yourself?”

For the first time since she stood over Kylo Ren’s prone form, as he struggled to find his feet and she knew he could stop him from ever doing it again – for the first time, Rey is able to give voice to that feeling.

“I don’t know if I can.”

A gentle hand lays itself over hers, squeezing briefly. “Most days, neither do I. The trick is to keep asking.”

There are new, jagged pieces of her that she has never known before. Or maybe they’re old, only breaking through now the world has cracked the shell of _this is fine_ that she’s built around herself. The general’s rough voice smooths over these new pieces of her, and Rey thinks that if they can’t go away entirely, she can at least do more than let them slice her open.

* * *

There is a darkness in Luke Skywalker.

Rey doesn’t expect that. She has set him up in her mind as an opposition to Kylo Ren, something good and pure and hopeful to look up to, as she tries to banish the words _you need a teacher_ from her mind. And yet – she can see it in him. A despair, and an anger. A sense of hopelessness held at bay, but present.

“I don’t understand,” she admits one night, staring into the crackling flames of their campfire. The red glow twists in the night, making promises it can’t possibly keep. “I thought Jedi were supposed to be…above all that.”

It’s embarrassing. She doesn’t want to accuse him of anything, doesn’t want to put a foot wrong. She holds the fear of rejection close to her heart still, wakes up in a terror that he won’t want to teach her any more. That she is not enough. That she is no one.

But she needs to know, because there is a voice whispering in her head that says _if even Luke Skywalker has made the darkness a part of himself, how can I possibly avoid it?_

“Every fall comes from a height,” Luke muses. A faint smile tugs at his mouth soon after. He has never looked more like his sister. “Sorry, that was cryptic. What I mean is, no Jedi is above anything. No person is above anything. When you start to think that you know better, do better, are better than anything else – that’s when you run into trouble.”

“The Dark Side.”

“Usually,” he agrees. “Or just being a jerk. You don’t need to be afraid of your negative emotions. A flash of anger, irritation, bitterness – even hatred. None of those things are going to sign your official Dark Side contract. To be Jedi is to be human, not separate from them.”

“Official Dark Side contract.”

That glimmer of a smile. “The short term benefits are great. It’s the hidden costs you have to watch out for.”

She twitches a smile back, but the dancing flames are distracting, drawing deeper thoughts out of her. It takes her another moment or two to summon up the nerve to ask her next question.

“Did you ever…?”

“Fall?”

She nods.

“I suppose that’s a matter of debate.” His gaze slides to the stripped metal of his hand. “I wanted to.”

The admission strikes at something buried in Rey’s chest, the thing inside her that hears Kylo Ren cry _you need a teacher_ and yells back _yes_. She leans forward, eager or afraid. Impossible to tell. “You wanted to? How could you want to? How did you resist?”

Luke sighs. He looks, abruptly, every inch his age. Maybe more. “I don’t think I need to tell you how I could want to.”

Rey thinks of being five and alone, eight and alone, twelve and alone, eighteen and alone. She thinks of being nineteen and finally carving out a place for herself, only to have one pillar torn away, the other threatened.

She thinks of her alternative life, of dying surrounded by little white scratches on the walls, and knows how Luke Skywalker might have wanted to.

“As for resisting? I made a choice.”

“What kind of choice?” If anyone has the answer, it’s him. This man, this Master of the Force who sits next to her with his own darkness roiling inside, and yet still manages to be so much of the Light.

“Not to fall.”

She stares at him, waiting for the rest. He looks back at her, placid as anything, and something new (and old) roars up in Rey’s chest, spews out of her mouth before she can stop it.

“What kind of answer is _I chose not to fall_?”

It’s not loud. It’s not even especially angry. But there’s a venom there that she doesn’t recognise, that she wants to claim has no part of her. The second the words escape her she recoils from them, hands lifting in a futile gesture like maybe she can grab them back. Maybe she can erase them.

The fire flares high for an instant, throwing shadow across Luke’s face. And then it returns to normal, and he is still old, still sad, still a Jedi.

“It’s the only one I have. It’s the thing my father forgot, that Ben has convinced himself no longer applies. It doesn’t matter how deep into the darkness you walk, Rey. You can always choose to come back.”

* * *

There is a darkness in Rey, and it belongs to her.

There is a darkness in Rey, and it does not.

 _I wish you weren’t here_ , she tells it, staring up at the stars.

Somewhere in a room lit with artificial glare, Kylo Ren gazes out a viewport. _Your pain comes from uncertainty. I can give you clarity_.

She considers that, and wishes she didn’t.

_I don’t think you can._

She isn’t sure.

* * *

There is a light in Rey, and it belongs to her.

There is a light in Rey, and it belongs to someone else as well.

Finn stirs in his medpod for the first time in days. She wants to reach in and take his hand, but there’s a wall of glass between them. She presses her palm to it instead.

“Hey,” she whispers. “Welcome back.”

A smile breaks over his face like the sun rising. “Hey,” he croaks. “You’re here.”

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

She isn’t sure.

* * *

_How am I going to get through this darkness, without making it a part of myself?_

Rey sits in the captain’s chair of the _Millennium Falcon,_ feeling the weight of what is missing, the promise of what might come.

“I don’t know,” she admits, and makes the leap into hyperdrive.


End file.
